Motivational effects of compounding discriminative stimuli associated with food and cocaine

Abstract

In previous experiments, the compounding of two discriminative stimuli associated with the same reinforcer increased rats' responding approximately three-fold, regardless of whether the reinforcer was food, water, cocaine, or shock-avoidance. Compounding a discriminative stimulus associated with food with one associated with water increased responding two-fold. In the present experiment, compounding a discriminative stimulus associated with food with one associated with cocaine increased responding two-fold. These results support the hypothesis that 1) the effects of stimuli associated with reinforcers from the same incentive class (appetitive or aversive) are mutually enhancing, and 2) the combined effects of stimuli associated with two different reinforcers from within the same class are not as strong as those of two stimuli associated with the same reinforcer. These results also suggest that discriminative stimuli associated with non-drug reinforcers may increase the motivation to self-administer cocaine when encountered in combination with drug-related stimuli.

Environmental stimuli promote the acquisition of nicotine self-administration in rats

“…The finding that drug-associated environmental stimuli potentiate nicotine self-administration is consistent with prior research on other drugs such as cocaine (Meil and See 1996;Panlilio et al 1996Panlilio et al , 1998Fuchs et al 1998;See et al 1999;Weiss et al 2000;Schenk and Partridge 2001) and heroin (Panlilio et al 2000), although most of that research has dealt with maintenance or reacquisition after extinction of drug-reinforced responding, not acquisition. In a recent study, a single light cue associated with cocaine self-administration was effective in increasing responding in the absence of the drug but did not interact with cocaine to enhance the reinforcing effects of the drug during acquisition (Deroche-Gamonet et al 2002).…”

The dissociation of heroin-seeking patterns induced by contextual, discriminative, or discrete conditioned cues in a model of relapse to heroin in rats

“…Indeed, a condition often associated with drug craving in humans is cognitive awareness of drug availability (Grant et al 1996). Our results, together with the other observations (McFarland and Ettenberg 1997;Panlilio et al 1998;Weiss et al 2000;Gracy et al 2000), suggest that the incentive salience of the drug-predictive DS has relevance to the human condition where the presentation of drug availability stimuli increases the likelihood of relapse, as well as self-reports of craving.…”

“…Although the DS exposure also maintained the drug-seeking responding after the CSs response-outcome contingency had been degraded, the responding elicited by DS was not recovered following the extinction of CSs. It is possible that the alternative presentations of DS with discrete CSs during training produced thesame form ofcompound stimulus (Panlilio et al 1998;See et al 1999;Weiss et al 2001); thus, DS signaling the drug availability might act as an occasion setter and acquire incentive-motivational value. Because of this dual property, the DS are particularly powerful in eliciting drug seeking and reinstatement (Schmajuk et al 1998;Weiss 2005).…”

Cocaine sensitization and dopamine mediation of cue effects in rodents, monkeys, and humans: areas of agreement, disagreement, and implications for addiction

“…6a). Compound stimuli were used because of evidence that they exert greater control over behavior, and thus, produce more robust conditioning than single modality cues (Panlilio et al 1996(Panlilio et al , 1998See et al 1999). The compound stimulus we employed was a combination of a visual cue, an auditory cue, and an olfactory cue.…”